I'm a member of the Forbes wealth team, covering the world's richest people. I'm also the author of Forbes' first graphic novel, The Zen of Steve Jobs. Previously, I've written for the Chicago Tribune and The Times of South Africa. My alma mater is Northwestern University's Medill School, which has recently altered its name to include a rambling string of words that I cannot be bothered to remember. Follow @CalebMelby and/or circle me on Google+

The beverage industry has a true abolitionist—and it’s not New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. It’s a guy who was born in Queens, N.Y. before his family whisked him away to Israel at age 8. Daniel Birnbaum believes the soft-drink and bottled-water business is, by turns, “flawed,” “broken,” “wrong,” “stupid” and “evil.” But, unlike the mayor, he doesn’t want to deliver us just from calories. He wants to smash our ties to Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. “The world has a drinking problem,” he says with a John Brown-ish glint in his eye. “They are consuming these bottles and cans they don’t need. It should be illegal!”

Birnbaum is also the CEO of SodaStream International of Airport City, Israel. It makes devices that carbonate plain tap water and flavor it so it tastes very much like the bad guys’ stuff. But SodaStream has three critical selling points. It’s cheaper than soda: Each 60-liter canister of carbon dioxide, which you exchange at retailers for $15 a pop, creates roughly 100 20-ounce bottles or 170 12-ounce cans. It’s slightly healthier: SodaStream flavorings are made with lower-calorie natural sugar, Splenda or Stevia. And there’s practically no waste, since the machine works with a reusable glass or plastic bottle.

Americans toss away a staggering 130 billion bottles and cans that end up in landfills or incinerators every year. In Birnbaum’s Big Cola-emancipated utopia you quickly reduce that number by embracing a SodaStream device at every drink stop in your day: the AquaBar for filtered hot or cold water to make soda, coffee or tea at the office; at lunch, a pitcher with flavor capsules; isotonic formulas available at the gym; a municipal seltzer fountain on your way home (these exist in Paris); mixed carbonated drinks in the evening.

“Fifty years ago you weren’t drinking out of a plastic bottle,” says Birnbaum, 49. “In 50 years you won’t drink out of a plastic bottle. Our goal is to speed up the process.” He aims to convert 20% of American households—20 million-plus families— over the next decade. Only trouble is that while SodaStream’s U.S. revenues have doubled in each of the last three years, it now has only 0.7% of the carbonated beverage market.

He wasn’t always such an effervescent evangelist. Birnbaum grew up on family camping trips in the Midwest and fondly recalls root beer from A&W drive-throughs as his favorite soda. After his family moved to Israel Birnbaum graduated from the Hebrew University with a B.A. in business administration and economics, then went on to get a Harvard M.B.A. For 15 years he ran Israeli affiliates of multinationals like Pillsbury and Nike.

While chief of Nike Israel he got a call in late 2006 from a Harvard friend at Fortissimo Capital, the private equity fund in Rosh Haayin. Fortissimo was kicking the tires at SodaStream, founded in 1903 by Guy Hugh Gilbey (as in the gin distiller), who invented an “aerating liquid” machine for the Noël Coward classes. Gilbey’s device also used compressed CO2, yet the patent, filed in 1914, makes reference to numerous additional valves, pistons and plungers. In time it was bought by Cadbury Schweppes and then Soda-Club, an Israeli outfit.

When Birnbaum caught up with it, the company “seemed rusty, dusty, not very exciting.” And when his friend asked him to sit in on a marketing presentation—delivered by a lawyer, since there was no marketing department— Birnbaum sensed doom. “No basic questions could be answered,” he says. “Things like, why aren’t you in the U.S.? In Russia? I told him, ‘It feels like everything is wrong, but I wouldn’t know what to do with it.’”

Fortissimo bought the company for $10 million, half of that in a note. Three weeks later Birnbaum got another call: Would he like to run the bubbleless company?

That’s when his zeal overcame his better judgment. “Life became more about doing something significant, important, grand,” he says, warming to the memory. “I felt people were looking at me like I was crazy.”

Birnbaum’s first act was to push into the U.S. SodaStream had more or less flooded western Europe (which still accounts for more than half its sales). Now he persuaded higher-end U.S. retailers—Bloomingdale’s, Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table and Bed, Bath & Beyond—to carry seven soda¬making machines from $80 to $200. An oddball assortment of celebrities took up the pitch: Sean Hannity boosted SodaStream on his radio show, Jillian Michaels liked that it was healthy, Susan Sarandon picked up on the environmental crusade and Jim Cramer hosted a taste test on his show (and pushed the stock).

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SodaStream shows that you can make money and be green if you have a good idea and execute on it. Part of the key is they make it easy to be eco-friendly — and a lot of people want to do if they don’t have to make too big a sacrifice. We have one and it’s cut our use of bottles enormously.

Excellent point, Rob. Sodastream has managed to wrap cost savings, health benefits and that ethereal sense of “having done good” into one package, which is a winning trio. Much harder to get people to buy in if all they get is the “having done good” part.

I like SodaStream, but I’m not a big fan of Splenda (even if it’s the best of the artificial sweeteners), so the flavors aren’t the best (as they seem to put Splenda even in their non-diet formulas). I think there’s a market for alternate syrups, or perhaps SodaStream could consider a couple of flavors that just use sugar. I found some expensive syrup that I prefer, which negates whatever cost savings I’d normally get with SS. Then again, I get a more “all-natural”ingredients list and no high-fructose corn syrup.

So, to answer, “What’s not to love?” and the other comments, as long as you like Splenda, there’s no problem! I’m still looking for that right balance of cost savings and flavor, as well as the other-mentioned benefits.

I showed the results to a coworker who seems interested in the cost savings for when he simply wants fizzy water.

I realize this is a late reply, but one way to actually save money and/or enjoy soda with better ingredients than Splenda is to make your own flavorings. I highly recommend the book Homemade Soda by Andrew Schloss. It has over 200 recipes for creating your own sodas, with a variety of carbonation methods, including carbonation devices like the SodaStream. I’ve tried several of the recipes and they are very good. I use stevia for a no-calorie sweetener, and sucanat or rapadura for the syrup recipes. I do it so that I can control the quality of ingredients in my drinks, but I have enjoyed the added benefit of cost savings.

Making your own soda (or pop) is way too much work. I guess he does realize Americans are gluttonous and buying a 2-liter just isn’t enough so let’s give ‘em an unlimited stream of soda. So while you take away the pain from one end, you contribute to the other epidemic in this society.

Still, kudos for having a good idea. As an entrepreneur myself, much respect.

I am confused. I saw an ad, considered buying the sodastream, but I can’t see how the sodastream company can tout savings when there are none. They should tout profits by selling mixes with a cost that has to be the same as about the cost of a can of soda, but yet are able to wholesale it high enough so it retails between $8 and $12 at the worlds biggest online store and in some places for even more as well. I’ve seen it as low as $5 when on sale while watching this. These mixes make the equivalent of 6 2-liter bottles per syrup. If you know how to shop and wait for sales, all the major chains have sales regularly on the brand names out there. And I can get 6 2-liter bottles for about the same cost of the syrup. If I go with a store brand I can pay even less.

So In order to save the planet, I give one greedy man’s “green” company more money and he is touted as helping with caring about the planet? Is that the idea? If the syrups were more like $3 retail, this could actually take off globally make sense as a global replacement for what is on the market for home soda drinkers and would make fiscal sense to everyone so we could actually see real change. But until it makes fiscal sense, getting rid of plastics while paying more for this stuff in most cases is a pipe dream. One man in this article can give up a little money and change the world and still be successful, and I see that possibility here, but would rather make more money and the idea will never grow the way it truly could.

What is that bottle the syrups are sold in made out of, anyways? ;)

I think it’s a very good branding. marketing, and deployment plan along with some misdirection, and for that I give him Kudos and It makes sense to talk about that on a business site. But it bothers me to see a great idea that can use the term “green” wich could actually pave the way to a better planet being held back by larger profit margins on smaller volume when they could make far more if the syrups had a better price point.